Pages

Tuesday, July 26, 2011

Lack of Insight

Hey there,

Finally found some time to watch Go Back to Where You Came From, a SBS documentary about a social experiment, sending a few Australians on a trip to let them experience how it is like to be asylum seekers coming to Australia. It was released on TV quite some time ago but it was during my exam period so I didnt manage to find the time to watch it. Even today, I only got to watch 1 episode of the 4 part series.

I know the population in that show is not representative of the Australian population but wow. Wow. Wow. I lack the word to describe the lack of perspective some of these people have. I often joke around with my Australian friends about how some of them just do not have perspective on how bad some things are and how some of the things that they worry about are so trivial. I sometimes laugh with friends when watching the news because of some of the stories the report. One that comes to mind is when politicians made a big deal out of the car that was given to Minister Kevin Rudd. They were worried that it was considered to be bribery. I lol-ed at that because I came from a place where bribery was embedded in the culture.

It is all relative I guess, if you grew up in a place where everybody is safe and you had proper education, cows being slaughtered “inhumanely” (assuming there is a humane way to kill animals) is a horrible horrible tragedy. However, if you grew up in a place where you can be shot dead because of your race or because you talked to an American soldier, getting on a boat with the hope of finding freedom is not that bad. I am flabbergasted that some of them did not thought that way and are adamant that getting on a boat to seek refuge is a stupid decision to make.

Some of the people in the show make me wonder if they have ever picked up the news papers or watched the news. I think you would have more of an understanding of things that happens around our world compared to these people if you had watched news for 10 minute or read the 10% of the papers fortnightly.

The insight that some of these people have reminds me of the insight that my 81 year old patient with vascular dementia, a pacemaker and brain surgery or the 85 year old lady sitting across her with a non-dominant stroke have. The former thinks its January and the latter thinks she is in the 1950s and that she is in a shopping center. At least she knows that she is not at home.

Anyways, yeah, I know that by no means I am very in touch with current affairs. I have a lot of reading to do to be up to date and these people gave me a very very good reason to never stop learning and reading.

I guess you do not need to have Alzheimer's or schizophrenia to lose insight. All you need is to stop educating yourself.